Oz assault begins

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Adelaide exotic dancer Shakti is involved in half a dozen productions in Edinburgh, including one that features whipping and striptease.Picture:Bryan Charlton

Australian performers are a natural for the Edinburgh Fringe Festival - it's part of their culture, writes Clare Morgan.

Edinburgh's Royal Mile seems to become more clogged by the day: tourists; open-top buses in the narrow cobbled street; performers on the crowded footpaths, including one ambling around without a head. Soon to join them are Australian performers offering everything from stand-up comedy to puppetry for grown-ups, ready to launch into the 58th Edinburgh Festival Fringe.

This year, there will be 25,326 performances of 1695 shows (1541 last year) by 735 companies in 236 venues. Paul Gudgin, in his sixth year as director, says one of the best aspects of the Fringe is discovery.

"You can go and see five shows in a day: a couple of them will be OK; one is likely to be a dud; but one of them you might remember for the rest of your life."

Gudgin attributes the high Australian involvement, on stage and off, to the country's strong festival culture.

"There are now 54 fringe festivals around the world and a good number of those are in Australia and New Zealand. The other thing is there are probably three major comedy events in the world: Montreal, Melbourne and Edinburgh. So that's a strong base."

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The Edinburgh Fringe offers performers huge exposure. "With more than 1000 talent scouts, 2000 journalists from around the globe and the Edinburgh TV Festival on at the same time, the chances of being seen are very high," Gudgin says.

The bigger antipodean musical acts will perform in the Famous Spiegeltent. Operated by Australian David Bates, it's one of the Fringe's more atmospheric venues, although that might be because it's full of Australians crying into their beers as Paul Kelly launches into To Her Door or David Bridie proclaims I've Got a Plan. This year, the Spiegeltent will host Kelly, My Friend the Chocolate Cake, the Cat Empire and Colcannon, a five-piece folk outfit led by John Munro of the Eric Bogle Band.

As for comedy, Adam Hills returns for his eighth consecutive year. Joining him are Jimeoin, Steve Hughes, Tracy Bartram, who is returning to Edinburgh after 10 years with her show Illegally Blonde, and Cal Wilson, who's a New Zealander, but if she's any good we'll claim her as one of ours.

Other Fringe first-timers are Elise Even-Chaim, Jim Jeffries and Matt Dyktynski, better known as an actor and last seen in Japanese Story but now trying his hand at comedy with Matt Dyktynski - Pole Dancer.

Then there's former Men at Work frontman Colin Hay, who is presenting a "one-man musical and theatrical journey" that traces his life from Saltcoats, on the coast of Ayrshire, to Australia to Los Angeles, and satirical rock band Man Bites God, who will be followed by a film crew shooting a documentary.

Caroline O'Connor in Bombshells.Picture:Supplied

Caroline O'Connor might not be well known in Edinburgh - although she played the London West End in 1995 in the hit musical Mack and Mabel - but the pocket powerhouse is sure to change that when she performs her acclaimed one-woman show, Joanna Murray-Smith's Bombshells, in which she plays six different women grappling with the stress of modern life.

One of the more controversial performers is Adelaide dancer Shakti, a Fringe regular for the past decade who has survived ridicule and disapproval of her erotic and hard-to-categorise shows (one performance was described as "glorified pole-dancing") to become a Fringe character.

Last year, Glasgow's Herald gave her show five stars. This year she is involved in half a dozen productions, including 1001 Nights (The Arabian Nights), The Shaman (The Winds of Bon) and Japan Experience - J Boys - Gay Revue, which features whipping and striptease.

On stage, there's Bird in the Bush, a drama about two wise-cracking Australian mates trekking across Tasmania; the Disconnected, by Melbourne company the waters ants; Laundry at 4am, which is to be performed in a laundrette; the black comedy Two Women and a Chair, by writer Michael Olsen; and Virgins, in which four actors play every character aboard a cut-price airline's first flight from Sydney to London.

And there's Men, by Australian playwright Brendan Cowell and starring Jonathan Dutton, better known as Tad from Neighbours. There's another Neighbours link in The Packer, starring Jay Bunyan, who played Jack Scully in the soap.

Finally, there's Caravan, an adults-only puppet show by Melbourne's Black Hole company, which is billed as rod-puppetry meets Pulp Fiction.